Usually I’m not a big fan of restaurants that try to do too many things. With Café con Leche, however, I make an exception. Its mix of Cuban, Mexican and Puerto Rican cuisine is not the result of a poor business plan but is the natural outgrowth of the owner’s multi-ethnic family. He is Mexican, his wife is Puerto Rican and his father is Cuban. They all love food, and they each bring their unique sensibilities to the kitchen. The result is a menu offering everything from tortas to jibaritos to sandwiches Cubanos, most rendered with sincerity and authenticity.
There is nothing here that will blow you away; there are a half dozen other places between here and West Logan Square that do pretty much the same thing. Yet neither is there anything here that falls flat. Given such a diverse palette of Latino favorites, it is remarkable that the level of proficiency remains so consistently above average.
Breakfast is perhaps the best time to visit Café con Leche when you will probably want to enjoy the namesake coffee which is really very good and highly recommended. If you’ve been having a rocky time of it lately with your significant other you might want to tuck into a plate of huevos divorciados, a whimsical presentation of two sunny side up eggs, one in a pool of green salsa, and one in a pool of red, on either side of a dividing line of refried beans and cheese.
The breakfast burrito is good and compares well with other good breakfast burritos at places like Bongo Room and Earwax Café. My chilaquiles, crispy fried thin tortillas smothered with salsa and topped with cheese, onions, sour cream and eggs, were flavorful at first but grew tedious by the end because the small tortillas greatly outnumbered every other item on the plate. The skirt steak that came with, however, was very good, cooked to perfection.
Café con Leche sits on a wedge corner in a small cinder block structure that most recently housed a taco shop. A small outdoor patio doubles the space in the summer months. The front of the restaurant opens completely onto the patio making for a single fluid indoor-outdoor space, a set-up commonly seen in Latin America. In fact, there is a certain down-to-earth authenticity to Café con Leche. It might have been transplanted whole from a working class neighborhood in Miami. And just like a restaurant in such a neighborhood, the food is good but not great, the atmosphere is genuine but not glamorous, and the service is friendly and hardworking but not sophisticated.
On the other hand, Café con Leche is not attempting to reinvent Latin American comfort food for the upscale set. It just wants to bring the diverse and flavorful cuisine of our most immediate Latin American neighbors to the good folks of Bucktown and do so with competence and consistency. If it’s not as grittily authentic as its previous incarnation in Logan Square it’s not because of any failings in the kitchen. It’s just that Bucktown has a less earthy and ethnic clientele than Logan Square.
In fact, Café con Leche is as genuinely ethnic as any restaurant can be in Bucktown these days, and for all that, it remains true to its pedigree. And for that I give it props.
Café con Leche
1732 N. Milwaukee
773-342-2233 / Reservations Not Accepted
Hours: 7am-10pm daily.
Features: Outdoor Dining, Brunch, BYOB, Carryout, Delivery
Avg. Price of a Meal for Two Including Drinks and Tax $30
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